The Brushes Palette

The Brushes palette provides access to a wide variety of options for controlling the appearance and characteristics of your brush strokes. You can use preset brushes, or you can create your own custom brushes using a variety of interchangeable settings.

1. To create custom brush characteristics, select a painting tool. By default, the Brushes palette is socked in the Palette Well (on the right-hand side of the Options Bar). Click on the brushes tab to display the Brushes palette.
2. Make sure the Brush presets option is selected. Click on a preset brush in the scroll list. You can rest your cursor on a preset brush in the scroll list to show a help label which indicates the settings currently applied to the brush. Notice that, depending on brush preset you click on, the various customized settings already applied to the brush, visible in the left hand column, change accordingly.

3. To customise the preset brush by adding your own brush settings, removing existing settings or adding new effects, click the check boxes to the left of the brush characteristic labels. The preview pane at the bottom of the palette updates to indicate the effect on the brush of your choices. (In this example the |9-pixel, hard-edged brush is selected, with Scattering and Wet Edges also applied.)
4. Drag the Master Diameter slider to change the size of the brush, or enter a value in pixels in the size entry box.
5. Click on the brush tip shape button to change shape settings such as Angle, Roundness, Hardness and Spacing if required.
6. Click the brush characteristic label (to the right of the check box) to access a range of controls for the option.
7. Create settings for Mode, Opacity and Flow in the Options Bar.
8. If you click on a different brush in the scroll list, any custom settings for the previously selected brush are lost.
9. Position your cursor in the image window, then drag to create the required paint stroke.

The Brush Pop-up Palette

The Brush pop-up palette allows quick, convenient access to a range of standard, preset brushes.

1. To select a brush, click on the Brush tool to select it, then click the Brush pop-up triangle icon in the Options Bar.

2. Click on a brush you want to use in the scroll box. A representation of the shape of the brush appears in the left column of the scroll box, a thumbnail of the stroke appears to the right. The number beneath the brush icon indicates the diameter of the brush in pixels.
3. To change the size of the brush, drag the Master Diameter slider to increase/decrease the size of the brush, or enter a value in pixels in the size Entry box. Click the use sample size button to return to the original size of the brush if you have made changes to the Master Diameter. (This option is only available for brush tip shapes created originally from a sample of pixels).
4. Create settings for Mode, Opacity and Flow in the Options Bar and choose the Airbrush option if required.

5. Position your cursor in the image window, then press and drag to apply the foreground colour using the current brush characteristics and the brush settings in the Options Bar.

Opacity
Opacity (Brush, Pencil, History Brush, Art History Brush, Gradient, Paint Bucket, Clone Stamp and Pattern Stamp tools) controls how completely pixels are covered with the foreground colour when you drag across them.

Make sure the Opacity slider is at 100% if you want to completely cover the pixels you drag across. (Soft-edged brushes only partially cover pixels around the edge of the painting stroke to create the soft edge effect.) Reducing the Opacity setting gives less complete results in the area you drag across, creating a semi-transparent, partially-covered effect.


Flow

Flow controls how quickly paint is applied when you drag the brush across the image.

Airbrush

Select the Airbrush option to imitate the effect of spraying paint with an airbrush. The Airbrush option works best with soft-edged brushes and reduced Opacity and flow settings.

THE SWATCHES PALETTE

You can use the swatches palette (Window>show Swatches) to set foreground and background colours, and you can also use it to create custom palettes which you can save and then reload into a different image.

1. To select a foreground colour from the Swatches palette, click on a colour swatch. To select a background colour, hold down Alt and then click on a colour swatch.

You can customize the Swatches palette by adding and deleting colours in the palette.
2. To add colour to the swatches, select a foreground colour. Position your cursor in an empty area of the Swatches palette. (The cursor changes to a paint bucket). Then click. Enter a name for the new swatch, then click OK to add the current foreground colour to the Swatches palette.

3. To delete a colour swatch, hold down alt (Mac) or Alt (Windows) and then click on a colour swatch.
4. Use the Swatches palette pop-up menu to reset the Swatches palette to its default settings, or to choose a different colour palette from the list.